Hijack

by Chris Ryan

  Abby tied one end of her long rope to one of the free anchoring points at the back of the RIB. She tugged it to make sure it was fast, then located the other end and wrapped it once around her waist and then across her chest. She retrieved the knife from the storage area and stowed it in a pocket. The VHF radio was still clipped to her life jacket. Then she turned to face the ladder.

  She was going to have to be quick. Quicker than the others, if she wanted to survive.

  She grabbed a rung of the ladder and pulled herself up onto it. Holding on with one hand, she grabbed the knife and awkwardly pulled off the scabbard. Holding the scabbard between her teeth, she leaned down to where the RIB was tied to the trawler. ‘Here goes nothing,’ she muttered to herself, and put the sharp edge of the knife to the short rope connecting the two vessels. Then she cut it.

  The effect was immediate. The RIB, released from the trawler, shot backwards as the trawler forged on through the ocean. It was moving faster than Abby expected – and now she was against the clock. If she didn’t reach the deck before the rope went taut, there was every chance that she would be pulled off the rope and into the sea. She reckoned she had twenty seconds, if that.

  She sheathed her knife, stowed it again and climbed, groping furiously for the rungs with her hands and feet. They were wet and slippery and it was a struggle to grip them, especially as her palms were still sore from rope burn. Her stomach lurched with the movement of the trawler, and she had to force herself not to look down …

  She was halfway up when it happened. The trawler rolled and she found herself suspended from the ladder, hanging in mid-air and swinging towards the sea. She might have screamed – not that she or anyone else would have heard it. What was happening? For an awful moment she thought she had fallen. No, she was still gripping the ladder as her body slammed against the water …

  Suddenly, she was under. She held on to the ladder with all her might as the trawler, moving relentlessly forward, dragged her through the water. Then she was in the open air again. She saw to her dismay that the handheld VHF radio had become unclipped when she was under the water, but she didn’t dare loosen her grip on the ladder. The radio fell from her life jacket into the ocean. Seconds later, she slammed against the hull and the air was knocked from her lungs. Dazed and numb, she forced herself to keep climbing. She couldn’t stop for a second …

  Five metres to go. She could see Sami’s face above her, urgent and full of concern. He was reaching out for her, but she still had a quarter of the ladder to climb. She continued to scramble up, rung by rung, her muscles burning, her cold, wet hands gripping the metal tubing as hard as possible …

  And then she was there, alongside the railings. Sami and Lili hauled her on board. She collapsed onto the deck, soaking and breathless. But she knew she couldn’t take a single moment to relax. She uncoiled the rope from around her chest and waist and twisted the free end around the bottom railing and into a reef knot. She had barely finished tying it when the rope became taut. It strained against the knot, but the lashing held fast.

  Abby jumped to her feet and looked around. They’d been lucky. There was nobody on the stern deck. It was a cramped area with a couple of old cargo containers, one yellow, one blue, and some buoyancy rings tied to posts.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Sami hissed and pointed towards the yellow cargo container. The three cadets sprinted to its far end, where they squeezed out of sight between the container and an adjacent wall. Abby noticed that the door to the container had an external lock and chain, but the lock was undone. She wondered what was inside.

  ‘I thought you’d fallen,’ Sami whispered.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Abby said, still shaken. ‘We need to find Max and Lukas. We can’t wait.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Lili hissed. ‘Someone’s coming!’

  From their hiding place, Abby could just see two men walk around from the starboard side. They stopped by the cargo container, just out of sight of the cadets. But Abby knew they were still there. She could smell cigarette smoke and then, a few seconds later, could hear them talking in Spanish. She recognised one of the voices: it was the man with the red eyes. Abby had no great skill at languages but Lili was the opposite. Abby couldn’t even remember how many languages her friend spoke. Right now, she had her head cocked, listening carefully. As the two men spoke, Lili’s eyes widened and she silently seized Abby’s arm, as though for reassurance. One of the men laughed unpleasantly. Abby saw a half-smoked cigarette butt on the ground a few metres from where they were hiding. Then the men fell silent.

  ‘What did he say?’ Abby whispered.

  Lili swallowed hard. ‘One of them said, “We’ll give them one more chance to tell us who they really are.” Then the other one said, “We don’t have any more time to waste on the British boys. Let’s deal with them now.”’

  Abby and Sami stared at her. ‘We need to get going,’ she said.

  The zip of the body bag opened. Max inhaled sharply. Rain fell on his face, strangely refreshing. But there was nothing refreshing about the sight of the man who loomed over him.

  There was something different in his interrogator’s expression – a flatness to his red eyes. He didn’t say anything. To Max’s left, Lukas lay in his own body bag, the other man leaning over him.

  Max’s guy had his knife. He held it up to Max’s right eye. ‘You want to know a secret?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Max’s throat hurt and his voice was hoarse.

  ‘I’m pleased you haven’t told us who you are. Because it means I can do what I wanted to do from the beginning.’ The knife blade traced a path down Max’s cheek. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be dead before we throw you over. You won’t feel the water seeping into your body bag. You won’t feel the sharks ripping through the plastic. But this?’ He nodded to indicate the knife. ‘This you will feel. This you will really feel. So I’m going to give you one last chance: tell me who you are, and what you were doing at the listening station!’

  Max drew another long breath to calm himself. Then he said: ‘I’ve got a secret too.’

  The interrogator licked his lips. ‘What?’

  ‘First,’ Max said, ‘you have to remove the knife from my eye.’

  ‘The knife stays where it is.’

  ‘Fine,’ Max said. ‘Then my secret sinks to the bottom of the South Atlantic with me.’

  The man hesitated, then withdrew his knife. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ Max said. He kept his voice very low, so that the guy had to strain to listen. ‘My secret is that I’ll be out of this body bag in about twenty seconds.’ He waited. Confusion crossed the guy’s face. Max nodded over his shoulder.

  There, knife in hand, expression grim, stood Abby.

  Abby smiled. ‘Top of the morning to you.’

  And then she attacked.

  17

  Fight to Win

  Make no mistake, Hector had once told them, fights are not like they appear in the movies. They’re short, they’re sharp and they’re ugly. They open you up to the potential of being mortally wounded or killed outright. Always avoid them if you can. But if you can’t, fight to win.

  Abby grabbed the interrogator’s knife wrist with one hand and crooked her other arm around his neck. Max, who knew that fighting was a numbers game and that Abby couldn’t hope to overcome the man on her own, summoned all his strength. He clenched his stomach muscles and, as suddenly and sharply as possible, sat up. His wrists were still bound behind his back, his ankles were still tied, but he still had a means of attack. He slammed his forehead hard against his interrogator’s nose. It wasn’t a manoeuvre he would normally attempt, because he risked a broken bone in his own face. But his options were limited. There was a crack and a scream of pain. The guy dropped his knife, which clattered on the metal deck. Max slammed his face into his adversary’s nose for a second time. He yelled again. Abby dragged him away from Max, giving Max the opportunity to look over at Lukas.

  His friend seemed to have had
the same idea. Sami was dragging the other man away from Lukas. Lili had picked up his knife. She slashed the cable ties binding Lukas’s wrists and ankles, then strode over to Max and released him.

  ‘You took your time,’ Max croaked.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Lili said. She headed over to their two captives and removed the handguns from their shoulder holsters. ‘Slight disagreement with the captain of a naval patrol ship. Can you stand?’

  Max nodded and shakily stood up. He saw that Abby and Sami still had their guys in neck locks. ‘We need to put them somewhere,’ he said urgently.

  ‘There are cargo containers at the stern,’ Lili said, handing Max a handgun. ‘One of them’s open, but we can secure it from the outside.’

  Max nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’ He took a step forward, and had to grab hold of Lili as he felt his balance going.

  ‘You okay?’ Lili said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Max whispered. ‘But it’s been kind of a long night.’

  ‘You could say that.’ She bent down and handed Max the red-eyed guy’s knife, then gestured with her own knife that Lukas’s attacker should stand up. The guy couldn’t speak because Sami’s neck lock was too tight. He gave Max a stare of such hatred, however, that Max was in no doubt that if he wriggled free, he would attack immediately.

  ‘Move,’ Max said.

  They were no more than fifteen metres from the stern of the trawler. The area was strangely deserted. This bothered Max, but he needed to focus on helping the others. They shuffled their captives along the deck and to the stern. Here, Max saw the cargo containers the other cadets had mentioned, one yellow, one blue. They forced the two guys to the back of the yellow cargo container, where there was a door with an open padlock. Lili removed the padlock and opened the door. Abby and Sami shoved the two men inside and Lili slammed the door shut then locked the padlock. She stood with her back to the container and allowed herself a smile. ‘For a minute there,’ she said, ‘I thought maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’

  ‘We need to get off the ship.’ Sami pointed to the stern. ‘We’re towing the RIB. We need to haul it in …’

  ‘No,’ Max interrupted him. ‘Something’s not right.’

  ‘Max,’ Lukas said, ‘we really need to get off this boat.’

  Max turned to Lili. ‘You said you had a disagreement with the captain of a naval patrol ship. Why?’

  Lili blinked at him. ‘They were coming to intercept the trawler,’ she said. ‘But then they detected vessels heading back towards the Falklands. They think it’s a Pathfinder force and that the invasion’s going to be tonight. And we don’t want to get caught up in that, do we?’

  The others shook their heads – all apart from Max. ‘When we were on deck, before they put us in the body bags, it looked like there was an attack force mobilising,’ he said.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Lili asked. ‘What you saw confirms what the patrol ship detected.’

  ‘Yeah, but check out this ship.’ He raised one arm to indicate the trawler. ‘You really think they’re going to launch a major attack from a vessel like this? I don’t think they had more than twenty RIBs on the whole thing.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Lili said. ‘I’m guessing they didn’t give you a guided tour when they brought you aboard.’

  ‘No,’ Max agreed. ‘They certainly didn’t. But the deck’s deserted, apart from those two.’ He pointed at the cargo container. ‘Does this look like the centre of operations for a full-blown attack on the Falklands?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Abby said. ‘Compare it to HMS Stirling. It’s a heap.’

  ‘What if the Pathfinder force that the Stirling detected is a decoy?’ Max said. ‘What if it’s drawing British forces away from the real attack force …’

  The cadets stared at each other. ‘The Stinger,’ Abby said. ‘If they can lure aircraft from the RAF base away from their real landing spot, they can land on the island, arm themselves with surface-to-air missiles – and then take out whatever aircraft they need to!’

  ‘We need to warn them,’ Lukas said. ‘Did you bring a VHF radio? We can broadcast on the emergency channel.’

  ‘Er …’ Abby said. ‘Slight problem there.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you lost it.’

  ‘Yes, Lukas, I lost it when I was hanging from a rope ladder, trying to board this ship to rescue you. Want to make a thing about it?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Sami said. His eyes burned. A roll of thunder echoed in the distance, and the rain suddenly grew stronger. ‘If Max is right, and we’re the only people who’ve worked this out, we need to discover where the real invasion is going to happen.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ Lili said.

  There was a moment of silence. The cadets looked at the cargo container.

  ‘There’s no point asking them,’ Max said. ‘We’ll have no way of knowing if they’re telling us the truth. We need to find the operations room on this ship. It’s the only way we’ll find out for sure where the Argentines are truly intending to attack.’

  ‘That means taking the bridge,’ Lukas said. ‘We know there are armed men on board. We can’t do it without weapons.’ He looked fiercely at the two handguns they had confiscated from the interrogators.

  ‘If we can find out where the real attack is happening,’ Lili said, ‘we can try to contact HMS Stirling on the ship’s radio.’

  ‘Right,’ Max agreed. ‘But first, we’ve got a hijacking to finish off.’

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Sami said. ‘We don’t know how many crew members are on board. We don’t even know how to get to the bridge.’

  Max narrowed his eyes. ‘We split up,’ he said. ‘One group advances along the port deck, the other along the starboard. That way, if one group encounters enemy personnel, the other group still has a chance.’

  ‘What if we all get caught?’ Sami said.

  ‘Then we fight,’ Max said. ‘We have no other option. We have to get to the bridge. Lukas, Sami, Lili, you take the port side. Abby and I will take the starboard. One weapon per group. When we get to the bridge, we need to make sure the men on board believe that we’re prepared to use our firearms. You all comfortable with that?’

  The others nodded. Max checked his handgun, then cocked it and locked it. Lili did the same with hers. Without another word, they split up.

  Max and Abby crept to the starboard edge of the stern deck. They stood with their backs to the bulkhead before turning to the starboard deck itself. ‘Not going to lie,’ Abby whispered, ‘your face is a bit of a mess.’

  ‘The guy in the cargo container saw to that,’ Max said. His nose and lips were throbbing badly.

  ‘If I didn’t know you were as handsome as you are …’ she started to say, then interrupted herself with a rueful laugh. ‘Maybe I’ll leave the flirting till later.’

  Max allowed himself a smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Kind of got other things on my –’

  It was Max’s turn not to finish his sentence. Abby pressed her lips against his and gave him a lingering kiss. It hurt, but he didn’t mind. She was almost business-like as she pulled away. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s that out of the way.’

  ‘Er, yeah,’ Max said. His knees were suddenly weak. ‘Er …’

  ‘Come on,’ Abby said. ‘We going to finish this job or what?’

  Max nodded. ‘Hey, Abby. Thanks for coming to rescue us.’

  ‘Ah, we didn’t have much else on,’ Abby said. ‘Anyway, you’re not rescued yet. We’re still on board an enemy ship, in case you hadn’t noticed. You coming?’

  ‘Roger that,’ Max said. And together, with Max clutching his firearm two-handed in the firing position, they turned the corner and faced down the starboard deck.

  The deck was in shadow. Visibility was poor in the driving rain. But so far as they could tell, it was all clear. Max and Abby advanced, he slightly ahead of her, weapon raised. The ship listed and they lost their footing, but they managed to remain standing as they mov
ed towards the bow.

  Ten metres.

  Twenty metres.

  They stopped, suddenly. There were two figures straight ahead, grey and indistinct. Max and Abby pressed their backs against the bulkhead again. They waited.

  Twenty seconds.

  Thirty.

  The grey figures faded. Max and Abby continued advancing. There was a brutal crack of thunder somewhere in the distance and the rain fell sideways, pressing them into the ship. After another thirty seconds, the metal bulkhead wall to their left stopped. There was a gap, allowing them to see across to the port deck. Lili, Lukas and Sami stood there. Lili had her weapon raised. Lukas was checking back the way they’d come. Sami was looking across at Max and Abby. Between the two groups was an external staircase leading to a separate enclosed area at the front of the ship. Max and Sami exchanged a glance and nodded. The two groups of cadets advanced towards each other and met at the bottom of the staircase.

  ‘I think this is it,’ Max said. ‘There’s nothing forward of this position, anyway. I vote we investigate.’

  The others agreed.

  ‘Cover me,’ Max said. ‘I’ll get to the top of the staircase, see what’s beyond that door up there.’

  Lili knelt to one side of the staircase, pointing her weapon to the entrance at the top. Max climbed gingerly, holding tightly to a railing as the wind shook him from both sides. At the top he saw that the door had a round window, smeared with rain on the outside and condensation on the inside. He peered through it to see a well-lit corridor with another door at the end, five metres away. Looking over his shoulder, he made an ‘I’m going in’ gesture, then forced the heavy door open and stepped inside. As the door closed behind him, the sound of the wind was suddenly deadened. Dripping wet, and leaving a trail of water behind him, he advanced along the corridor. He reached the door at the far end and peered through a round window.